Your Opinion on the Current State of Job Identity/Balance in 6.4?

[Dzian]

because they were designed to do damage from the ground up.

Originally healers were given dps spells for one reason and one reason alone. And that reason was for solo play and the msq.

They were never intended to contribute dps in parties.

The problem stems from the fact that incoming damage is so low. Which again is deliberate by the devs because they don't want to overwhelm or stress healers or push people away from the role.

Encounter design is the games real issue.. tank self sustain isn't too high. Incoming damage is to low...

Healers are bored because incoming damage and stuff is so low that it takes no healing damage is far to scripted and predictable.

Ranged dps is busted because encounters are designed around unavoidable damage from raid wides.which means that ranged roles have to trade there power for survival.

So instead of the convention design where melee hit hard but have enough armor to take a few hits.

Casters hit even harder than melee at the cost of reduced mobility. There survival coming from magic barriers and control spells like binds and sleeps. Casting these spells costs dps.

Then you have physical ranged the old school glass cannons. Hit super hard. Are super mobile but are super squishy..

Melee should typically be among the weaker of the dps jobs as a trade for there survival and mobility.

Xiv encounter design breaks this paradigm though and everything loses its strength in exchange for extra survival. Burning a game where damage is the only thing that matters. Melee reign supreme because ranged gains nothing to compensate its lack of dps

[Silver-Strider]

Originally healers were given dps spells for one reason and one reason alone. And that reason was for solo play and the msq.

They were never intended to contribute dps in parties.

I don't believe this was ever the case honestly. Back in ARR, even when enemies actually hit worth a damn, it was still advantageous for Healers to DPS in most group content, It was almost grieving not to really. Add to that, some skills had secondary CC utility, such as Stone 1 granting a Heavy, Holy's stun, Shadowflare's Slow, etc. It's really hard to say this argument was ever true, regardless of the Devs intentions because they were just much more useful in group content then they ever were solo. Not like the Devs haven't been called out numerous times for inaccuracies in regards to game design. Then there's also the fact they added Aero 3 in HW, and the argument really loses any credibility it could've had really.

[WaxSw]

I don't believe this was ever the case honestly. Back in ARR, even when enemies actually hit worth a damn, it was still advantageous for Healers to DPS in most group content, It was almost grieving not to really. Add to that, some skills had secondary CC utility, such as Stone 1 granting a Heavy, Holy's stun, Shadowflare's Slow, etc. It's really hard to say this argument was ever true, regardless of the Devs intentions because they were just much more useful in group content then they ever were solo. Not like the Devs haven't been called out numerous times for inaccuracies in regards to game design. Then there's also the fact they added Aero 3 in HW, and the argument really loses any credibility it could've had really.

On top of that from a game design perspective it makes no sense. Healing is not useful past a certain point while dealing damage is always useful, as players optimize their gameplay they'll remove the less useful things (unecessary healing) for things that always have value, which is damage, so, if your game has fixed healer slots (meaning that you can't change the amount of healers you bring per encounter), those healers will always gravitate towards dpsing as they get better.

[GoatOfWar]

Originally healers were given dps spells for one reason and one reason alone. And that reason was for solo play and the msq.

They were never intended to contribute dps in parties.

The problem stems from the fact that incoming damage is so low. Which again is deliberate by the devs because they don't want to overwhelm or stress healers or push people away from the role.

Encounter design is the games real issue.. tank self sustain isn't too high. Incoming damage is to low...

Healers are bored because incoming damage and stuff is so low that it takes no healing damage is far to scripted and predictable.

Ranged dps is busted because encounters are designed around unavoidable damage from raid wides.which means that ranged roles have to trade there power for survival.

So instead of the convention design where melee hit hard but have enough armor to take a few hits.

Casters hit even harder than melee at the cost of reduced mobility. There survival coming from magic barriers and control spells like binds and sleeps. Casting these spells costs dps.

Then you have physical ranged the old school glass cannons. Hit super hard. Are super mobile but are super squishy..

Melee should typically be among the weaker of the dps jobs as a trade for there survival and mobility.

Xiv encounter design breaks this paradigm though and everything loses its strength in exchange for extra survival. Burning a game where damage is the only thing that matters. Melee reign supreme because ranged gains nothing to compensate its lack of dps

If it were true that healers were only given dps spells for solo play they'd still have them.
However, they do still spend most of their time doing damage despite 95% of their spells being heals.
Again, they were designed from the ground up to do damage. You were never spamcasting heals in FF. Healers have always dealt damage most of the time, and they still do. That's the way the entire game has been designed.
The amount of damage spells they have doesn't change the way they are intended to be played. But having those extra damage spells would make them infinitely more engaging.
We have always dealt damage way more often than we had to heal, the only difference is that they dumbed down the way this damage is applied more and more with each expansion.

[Malackai]

If it were true that healers were only given dps spells for solo play they'd still have them.
However, they do still spend most of their time doing damage despite 95% of their spells being heals.
Again, they were designed from the ground up to do damage. You were never spamcasting heals in FF. Healers have always dealt damage most of the time, and they still do. That's the way the entire game has been designed.
The amount of damage spells they have doesn't change the way they are intended to be played. But having those extra damage spells would make them infinitely more engaging.
We have always dealt damage way more often than we had to heal, the only difference is that they dumbed down the way this damage is applied more and more with each expansion.

Agree the only thing they changed it going from multiple buttons of dps to just 1-2 (and we actually lost a "dps" stance(cleric stance) role ability that would actually have made leveling/MSQ duties less tedious and slow >_>)
if I remember correctly it was also kind of needed to dps as a healer in Alex savage at least back then if you dint want to hit enrage it was kind of expected for you to also dps when you could in general.